GLOSSARY ★ A-73worker an annual income of $2,500. It
also promised to provide pensions, reduce
working hours, and pay veterans’ bonuses
and ensured a college education to every
qualified student.
sharecropping Type of farm tenancy
that developed after the Civil War in
which landless workers— often former
slaves— farmed land in exchange for farm
supplies and a share of the crop.
Shays’s Rebellion Attempt by Massa-
chusetts farmer Daniel Shays and 1,200
compatriots, seeking debt relief through
issuance of paper currency and lower
taxes, to prevent courts from seizing prop-
erty from indebted farmers.
Sherman Antitrust Act Passed in 1890,
first law to restrict monopolistic trusts
and business combinations; extended by
the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.
Silent Spring A 1962 book by biologist
Rachel Carson about the destructive
impact of the widely used insecticide DDT
that launched the modern environmen-
talist movement.
single tax Concept of taxing only land-
owners as a remedy for poverty, promul-
gated by Henry George in Progress and
Poverty (1879).
sit- down strike Tactic adopted by labor
unions in the mid- and late 1930s, whereby
striking workers refused to leave factories,
making production impossible; proved
highly effective in the organizing drive of
the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
sit- ins Tactic adopted by young civil rights
activists, beginning in 1960, of demanding
service at lunch counters or public accom-
modations and refusing to leave if denied
access; marked the beginning of the most
militant phase of the civil rights struggle.
Sixteenth Amendment Constitutional
amendment passed in 1913 that legalized
the federal income tax.“separate but equal” Principle under-
lying legal racial segregation, upheld in
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and struck down
in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
separation of powers Feature of
the U.S. Constitution, sometimes called
“checks and balances,” in which power
is divided between executive, legislative,
and judicial branches of the national gov-
ernment so that no one can dominate the
other two and endanger citizens’ liberties.
Serra, Father Junípero Missionary who
began and directed the California mission
system in the 1770s and 1780s. Serra pre-
sided over the conversion of many Indians
to Christianity, but also engaged them in
forced labor.
settlement house Late- nineteenth-
century movement to offer a broad array
of social services in urban immigrant
neighborhoods; Chicago’s Hull House was
one of hundreds of settlement houses that
operated by the early twentieth century.
Seven Years’ War The last— and most
important— of four colonial wars fought
between England and France for control
of North America east of the Mississippi
River.
Seventeenth Amendment Progressive
reform passed in 1913 that required U.S.
senators to be elected directly by voters;
previously, senators were chosen by state
legislatures.
Shakers Religious sect founded by Mother
Ann Lee in England. The United Society
of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing
settled in Watervliet, New York, in 1774,
and subsequently established eighteen
additional communes in the Northeast,
Indiana, and Kentucky.
Share Our Wealth movement Program
offered by Huey Long as an alternative to
the New Deal. The program proposed to
confiscate large personal fortunes, which
would be used to guarantee every poor
family a cash grant of $5,000 and every